


a necessary conjunction

by Siria



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Joan does not attempt an intervention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a necessary conjunction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [be_themoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/be_themoon/gifts).



> A Yuletide treat! Contains a tip-of-the-hat to the ACD canon stories, "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League" and "The Adventure of the Reigate Squire." With grateful thanks to my beta, Esteefee.

Joan closed the front door behind her and walked over to the stereo system. The sudden absence of Wagner was almost as overwhelming as the music had been in the first place. 

"I was listening to that!" Sherlock yelled from the sofa. 

Joan turned around and arched an eyebrow at him. It didn't look like he'd moved since she'd left the house that morning; when she got closer, it was obvious from the sharp tang of sweat that at the very least he hadn't made it upstairs to the shower. He'd been there since yesterday morning; in the aftermath of their most recent case, apparently, nothing was interesting enough to distract him from a prone contemplation of the killer's methodologies. She left the coffee and the sandwich bag on the floor beside him, and then retreated across the room to sit in one of the wingback chairs and watch him. 

"Is this an attempt at a low key intervention?" Sherlock said. His eyes were closed, but Joan saw the way his fingers twitched when he caught the scent of the coffee. "'Sherlock, I have _concerns_ about you. We should talk.'" His mimicry of her accent was deliberately terrible: the vowels too nasal, the consonants lacking in enunciation. Joan rolled her eyes. As an attempt to needle her, it was pretty blatant. He must have been bored. 

Rather than pointing that out, though, she settled back in her chair and said, "There were two women at the table next to me in Starbucks. One African-American, one white, both early to mid-twenties, clothing neat but definitely not high end. The second woman was telling the first all about the strange week she'd been having. First, on Monday her dad had told her that he'd started dating someone for the first time since the divorce."

Sherlock huffed and cracked open one eye. "And what, her delicate sensibilities were offended by the fact that daddy dearest was pursuing a girl her own age?"

"Wrong gender," Joan said calmly. "But not the weirdest thing that happened to her this week." 

Sherlock sighed and slumped back against the sofa cushions, making a melodramatic little flurry of the hand that meant _carry on._

"Tuesday, she got home from a job interview to find the lock on her apartment door had been broken and she'd been robbed."

"If you would like," Sherlock said, "I could look up statistics for you, they're quite readily available and show that breaking and entering is par for the course, particularly if one is living in the kind of apartment that can likely be afforded by a recent college graduate who still hasn't secured a permanent position, even if she's likely receiving some sort of stipend towards her rent from her father. And yes, yes, before you say anything, that is most likely her living situation, given the median cost of rent in this particular neighbourhood."

"She'd been robbed," Joan said firmly, "but her laptop, her TV and her jewellery were all still there. The thief had taken a copy of the first Harry Potter book, a snow globe of the Seattle Space Needle, two cheap candlesticks and a ball of twine. Some of her furniture had been disturbed, some papers thrown around, but nothing else was taken. The police apparently told her it was probably some kids messing around, or maybe a thief too high to know what he was doing, filed a report for her insurance company—case closed."

Sherlock had been lying unmoving on the couch, but there was a sudden shift to his posture so that he seemed not just still, but waiting. "And?"

"Yesterday, she got a call from the temp agency she's signed up with. They had an offer of a six-month contract for her, to start next Monday, possibility of a permanent position when the trial period was up. Six thousand a month plus benefits."

Sherlock sat up slowly and took a sip of his coffee. He was trying his best to look nonchalant; Joan would have found it funny if not for the fact she knew she mustn't have looked that much different in the coffee shop—sitting there with her latte, staring unseeing at the book in front of her because her mind kept catching on all the things that were _wrong_ here and feeling her pulse stutter with the prospect of finding out just what. "That's an extremely generous offer," he said carefully, "to make to a newly minted graduate who doesn't appear to have the familial connections that would make this a simple spot of nepotism."

"Her friend thought so too," Joan said, "but she wasn't inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even when she explained why it was the temp agency called her in the first place."

His head now muffled by the depths of the paper bag as he rummaged for his sandwich and the extra packets of mustard on which he always insisted, Sherlock said, "Go on, Watson."

"The agency had said the prospective employer was very insistent the job be offered only to a natural redhead."

Sherlock paused mid-chew. With his cheeks full of tuna salad sandwich and his hair in disarray, he looked like a startled chipmunk. "Mmpfh-mmpfh?" he said, which Joan presumed meant 'redhead?' in woodland rodent.

"Natural redhead," Joan confirmed. "And she has a full head of bright auburn curls. The company she mentioned's a legitimate one. I googled it—offices on Madison Avenue, branches in San Francisco, Toronto and Austin."

He swallowed and said, "Huh." He was staring across the room at the fireplace, as if there were something fascinating to be gleaned from the spines of the books piled up in front of it. "That is—"

Sherlock jumped up, bounced lightly on the balls of his feet once, twice, three times, and headed for the stairs. He made it up three steps before coming back and standing in front of her. "If you are telling me this in an attempt at an intervention, or as some other means of distraction because you think I'm in danger of a relapse—"

Joan arched an eyebrow at him. "This is not you in danger of a relapse, Sherlock. This was you being bored, and a little bit lazy, and it's not my job to keep you amused. I told you about it because it seemed important."

"Yes," Sherlock said, "hrm, well. I suppose some ablutions are in order before we head out." He sniffed at his own armpit and then wrinkled his nose. "And then we shall start the hunt for our mysterious redhead." 

Joan let him get four steps up the stairs before she called out, "Her name's Melinda L. Black."

Sherlock paused for a moment before his head appeared over the top of the bannister. "Hardly the sort of thing one mentions in a conversation with a friend, one's full name."

"I know," Joan said. "Which is why I followed her when she went to buy another drink. She paid with a credit card."

"That is… quite brazen, Watson. Nicely played. Well then: on the trail of Melinda L. Black it is." The grin on Sherlock's face was all the brighter for how artless it was.

He vanished upstairs and Joan went to make herself a cup of tea. It wasn't her job to babysit Sherlock, and no one was paying her to look out for naive young women who spoke too loudly in half-empty coffee shops, but here she was regardless: boiling water while she waited for her client to finish singing in the shower so that, at her suggestion, they could go poke their noses in places where they definitely didn't belong. Joan leaned against the kitchen cupboards, folded her arms, and looked out the window at the afternoon sun slanting through her city's streets. She smiled.

Her mom was definitely going to say, "I told you so," but that was okay—it was all okay because it looked like, for the first time in a while, Joan knew what it was she had to tell herself.


End file.
